


Indispensable

by Madstuart



Series: Missives from the Black [1]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-06-26 04:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15656112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madstuart/pseuds/Madstuart
Summary: Rosemary Epps gets a job offer from a Mr. Keller to go work for Goddard Futuristics... and Dr. Pryce.





	1. July 23rd, 1976: Interview

Rosemary paused outside the door to the office suite that had been commandeered by the Goddard employees who were here to evaluate Grayson Biotech, the company she worked at. Apparently it was standard operating procedure for Goddard to come in to any company they bought out and do the exit interviews themselves; half of the scientists Rosemary managed had been let go over the past few hours, and all they would tell her about their exit interviews was that the severance package was "unexpected" and the person doing the interviewing was "really not something they could talk about," which Rosemary found rather foreboding.

She took a deep breath and knocked, and the door was opened by Al Jackson, one of Grayson's own HR reps... well, for the past four months, at least. He smiled down at her, and the sight of a friendly face relaxed her a little bit.

"I was told to come here to see someone named Mr. Bennett, Al," Rosemary said, smiling back up at him. "Is he free?"

"Yeah, come on in. The person you want to see is in the inner office. Just knock once and go right in." Al stepped back and held the door open for her. "Good luck, Miss Rosie. Not that you need it."

"Thanks, Al." Rosemary squared her shoulders and took another deep breath, then strode across the anteroom and knocked on the door to the inner office, then immediately opened it.

A tall, thin man, younger than she'd expected, looked up from behind the desk in the room and speared her with a direct, piercing look from strangely pale brown eyes. "Rosemary Epps, I presume," he said, grinning a rather predatory grin at her.

"Yes, sir," she said, shutting the door behind her and standing in front of it.

"Come in. Have a seat."

Rosemary shook her head. "If it's all the same to you, Mr. Bennett, I don't think I will. See, this isn't the first time I've been through a merger, and I know how it goes. You'll sit me down, and talk about all the  _wonderful_ changes that are coming down the pipeline now that Grayson and Goddard are as one, and then you'll tell me that unfortunately, there isn't any place for someone of my particular talents in this brave new world you plan to build. You have plenty of lab managers of your own. And then you'll offer me up a severance package that will, most likely, be frankly insulting in the face of the bonuses the C-suite is going to be getting as part of this merger, and I'll smile and nod and go off and go on my way. So how about we skip directly to the insulting severance package and me going on my way, hm?"

The man burst into surprised laughter at the end of her speech, and clapped his hands together a few times in a manner that was decidedly sarcastic. "Oh,  _well done_ , Miss Epps. Or can I call you Rosemary? Rosie?"

"Rosemary is fine, sir," she said, eying him warily.

"Rosemary, then. I see you have some... _misconceptions_ about the nature of this interview. Let me clear those up for you." The man picked up a rather full-looking file folder and tapped it against the desk to straighten the papers inside, then laid it flat again and opened it. "I am not Mr. Bennett," he said, standing and holding a hand out across the desk towards Rosemary. "My name is Arthur Keller, and I am  _very_ pleased to meet you."

Rosemary frowned and crossed the room to take Mr. Keller's hand, shaking it firmly. "Head of the Communications department at Goddard Futuristics Arthur Keller?" she asked, still eying him with caution.

"One and the same," he said, sounding amused.

"I see." Rosemary fell back into one of the visitor chairs that was on her side of the desk in a rather undignified manner, but at the moment dignity was beyond her. "This is the other kind of interview then, isn't it."

"You are quick on the uptake, aren't you." Mr. Keller's self-satisfied tone was already beginning to annoy Rosemary.

"Well, then. What kind of a job did you have in mind for me?"

"Oh, don't be so impatient. There are just a few preliminaries to get out of the way first."

Rosemary quirked one eyebrow in irritation. "Well, then. Please do continue with the preliminaries, sir."

"Very well. Your bachelor's degree is in microbiology?"

"Yes."

"Doesn't that make you a bit overqualified for what is, essentially, an admin position?"

"It's not unusual for a lab manager to have a degree in a science. Most of us started as research scientists or lab techs. I'm no different."

"I see," Mr. Keller made a note on the first page of the file in front of him. "So tell me, how did you wind up here?"

"The usual way. They hired me." Rosemary lifted her chin and looked Mr. Keller in the eye, an explicit challenge, but he only laughed humorlessly in response.

"I mean how did you wind up  _here_ , Miss Epps? You were shaping up to be a brilliant research scientist. You'd published seven papers, all very well received—as a co-author, of course, but the work was yours—as an undergraduate. At least four different research institutions were courting you for graduate school, and I know one company in particular was hoping to snatch you up before then. And you were doing this all as a black woman, in the 1950s, when there were still plenty of places in this country where there were laws against you being in the same classroom as whites. But you did it. And then... nothing. You never finished your thesis, you barely scraped together enough credits to graduate, and all those sparkling offers disappeared. So what happened, Rosemary?" As he'd made this speech, Mr. Keller stood up, resting his weight on his hands as he leaned further and further over the desk towards Rosemary, his direct gaze boring in to her. She swallowed dryly, but kept eye contact, certain that if she was the first to look away he would eat her alive... and she wasn't entirely certain that was metaphorical with Mr. Keller.

She leaned forward in her chair, not daring to blink, and smoothed her face into the smiling, pleasant mask that came so easily. "I'd ask how you know all that, sir, given that it happened twenty years ago, but I imagine you have your ways."

"Oh, I've only heard a rumor or two," Mr. Keller said, subsiding back into his chair and glancing down at the file in front of him—her file, Rosemary realized. And a very complete one it must be. "But I'm more interested in the truth," he added, catching her again with those strange pale brown eyes of his. "So what really happened?"

She tilted her head to one side, considering for a moment, and then shrugged. "You must have read my personnel file. I'm difficult to work with."

Mr. Keller laughed again, a laugh with real humor this time. It creased the corners of his eyes and made him look almost human for a moment, instead of like what Rosemary assumed a shark would look like if it were put in a very realistic human suit. "I do like someone who knows when to be discreet. And I like difficult people. They get things done." The humor faded, leaving only the predator behind. "Are you interested in getting things done for me, Rosemary?"

"That depends entirely on what you want me to do, sir," she said in what she felt was a remarkably calm voice under the circumstances.

"Well, let's see..." He paged through the file. "Tell me about your time with EL Pharmaceuticals."

"What do you want to know?"

"I'm rather curious about the, oh, how to put this delicately..." Mr. Keller smiled another shark-toothed grin. "The human resources side of your position there."

"You're talking about the trials on human subjects, aren't you." Rosemary looked down at her hands, examining her nails with exaggerated interest. "I wasn't involved in that whole fiasco, thank goodness."

"Weren't you?"

Rosemary looked up at Mr. Keller with what she hoped was a piercing gaze of her own, and he seemed a little taken aback, so she thought it might have worked. "Of course not. I didn't let my lab experiment on anyone who might be missed."

Mr. Keller laughed softly at that. "Rapists," he said, his tone somewhat intrigued. "Abusers. Murderers. Especially those of children. An elegant solution."

"I found it to be so. It helped with the... ethical objections certain of my scientists had."

"I see. And you have no objection yourself to carrying out other such... experimental trials in the future?"

"None whatsoever. Provided, of course, my standards for what makes an acceptable subject are met."

Mr. Keller gave her a thin-lipped, closed-mouth smile. "I think we can arrange that, yes."

"Well. Are the preliminaries over, then?"

"For now." Mr. Keller pulled a stack of papers out of the folder in front of him and placed it in front of her. "You'll eventually be in charge of a team of five, some of the top scientists in the world. It's likely they will rotate in and out from some of our satellite locations from time to time. The core group you will be in charge of is chemical and biological research, including virology and pharmaceuticals—and don't give me that look, your job history is sufficiently broad to deal with anything in those overarching categories, and I'm sure plenty more beyond that."

Rosemary lowered her skeptical eyebrow. "Well, yes, probably." She picked up the contract and started flipping through it, her eyebrows flying up her forehead in surprise when she reached the section on compensation. "This is... generous."

"We will expect you to be on call 24/7," Mr. Keller said. "Of course we're offering an on-site apartment and enough money to make it worth your while."

Rosemary hmmed noncommittally, then flipped back to the start of the contract. "I'd like the weekend to think it over."

"Rosemary, I'm a very busy man. I can't wait on other people to dither and dally about what decision they plan to make."

"You're assuming that this offer is something I can't resist." Rosemary set the contract down on the desk, and met Mr. Keller's eye. "Well. It's not. Even for the amount you're paying, you're asking a hell of a lot of me. I need the weekend to decide whether or not it will be worth it when the work you're offering me isn't any different than what I could find at half a dozen other companies, if I chose to really sell myself to them."

The corner of Mr. Keller's mouth twitched angrily. "Very well. You can have the weekend."

Rosemary picked the contract up again and gave Mr. Keller her brightest and most cheerful corporate smile. "Thank you, sir. I'll let your contact here know when I've made a decision."

Mr. Keller raised an eyebrow. "My contact?"

"That tall drink of water out in the anteroom. He's one of yours, isn't he."

Mr. Keller smiled humorlessly. "You really are quick on the uptake, aren't you, Rosemary."

"Indeed." Rosemary stood, doing her best to disguise how shaky her knees still were. "Are we done here, sir?"

Mr. Keller nodded, and Rosemary turned to leave the office. She shut the office door behind her and slumped a little, then turned an incandescent glare on Al, who was leaning against the opposite wall of the anteroom. "You  _bastard_. You're Mr. Bennett, aren't you."

* * *

 

Al laughed. He couldn't help it. She simply looked so damn indignant.

"You could have warned me," Rosemary muttered.

"Would it have helped, Miss Rosie?" Al asked, relieved her tone was more annoyed than angry.

"No, probably not," she said, before taking a deep breath and straightening her spine out. "Still, that was a nasty sort of trick to play on someone."

"Ah. Well. There is that." He frowned at her a little. "Am I still welcome tonight?"

Rosemary bit her lip and considered for a moment. "Dinner," she said, finally. "I'll eat dinner with you."

Al nodded. "Fair enough. I've got work to do, but I'll see you at..." he examined his watch. "Lord, you were in there longer than I thought. Seven thirty? At that brewery round the corner?"

"No. My apartment. I'm not sure I can face the rest of humanity this evening."

"You sure?" Rosemary nodded. "Well. See you then, darling." He crossed the room and reached out to chuck her gently under the chin, and she let him, though he expected it was force of will alone that kept her from jerking away from his touch. He let his fingers linger there, examining her face for a moment, and she examined him back, a little frown creasing a line between her eyebrows. "It will be all right, Miss Rosie. I promise."

She opened her mouth as if to respond, and then shut it again, still frowning. After a long, quiet moment, she spoke again. "Who should I send your way next?"

"We're done with your lab," he said. "It's just c-suite from here on out. So you just go on back to work. And don't you worry about a thing."

It was like watching a switch flip, Al thought. One moment Rosemary was all indignation and uncertainty, and the next her shoulders were squared off, her face smoothed out, a neutral smile painting her lips as she strode past him to the door back to the hallway and left without once looking his way again. Well, as much as a woman with her lack of height and abundance of hip could stride. It was a good deal more like sashaying, really.

Al shook his head, smiling, then knocked on the office door she'd come out of.

"Enter!"

Al opened the door to find Mr. Keller staring down at the file in front of him with an irritated frown on his face.

"Which offer did you end up giving her?" asked Al, curious.

"The basic one."

Al frowned as well. "I'm not sure that will be enough to tempt her."

Mr. Keller sighed. "I know. She said as much to my face. But I couldn't give her the enhanced offer. There are just too many unknown variables."

"Look, sir, I know she'll be a good fit for Pryce. If it's an issue with the profile I assembled..."

Mr. Keller shook his head. "Oh, no, that profile is some of your best work. But it still has... gaps. And it's those gaps I'm worried about."

"She wouldn't say anything about it, then?"

"No." Mr. Keller looked down at the file, contemplative. "I agree that she'll be an excellent fit for Pryce, but I also think she's more volatile than you've realized. And I'm not letting her in until I know her weak points. All of them."

"Give me the other offer."

"Al."

"Look, sir, I'll get you what you need. Right now, as far as she can tell, you're offering her the same thing she could get any one of a dozen other places. She might still walk away. But Pryce... She'll want that. Enough to set aside her caution. I can get her for you, sir."

Mr. Keller looked up at Al with a curious expression on his face. "I know why I want her. But why are you so enthusiastic about this woman, Al? Has your stone heart been pierced at last?"

Al laughed at that. "Definitely not, sir. But I like her. And I think... I think she's capable of the kind of loyalty you need. She just needs the right incentive." Al returned the curious look. "If you don't mind, sir, why are you so interested?"

Mr. Keller pulled a stapled stack of papers out of the file in front of him. "Biofuels." He waved the paper in Al's direction, and Al glanced at it, recognizing one of the old published papers of Rosemary's that he'd managed to unearth in his research into her past. "As a college student, she managed to cultivate a strain of bacteria that produced a clean-burning biofuel from food scraps and human waste, something that our scientists are just now starting to look into. Goddard Futuristics was trying to recruit her, until whatever happened to her happened, and both she and her research disappeared off the face of the earth." Al handed the paper back to Mr. Keller, who eyed it with distaste. "If I'd been with the company back then... she should have been ours. I don't like feeling as if I've had toys that should have been mine snatched away before I knew they existed."

Al frowned. "But she isn't that, not any more. She hasn't done any original research since college. Why do you want her now?"

"I still want the toys that should have been mine, Al. Even if they're broken now."

* * *

 

_Later that night..._

"What's that?" Rosemary had answered her door with a smile, but her eye was immediately drawn by the plain manila envelope Al was holding. Al smiled down at her.

"I'll tell you after dinner, Rosie. What's on the menu?"

Rosemary fidgeted. "I thought about cooking, but I was too wound up."

At Al's muttered "Thank God," she glared.

"So," she continued in a newly irate tone of voice, "I grabbed some Chinese on the way home."

"Excellent," said Al, holding up the brown paper bag in his other hand. "I brought you some of that awful cheap whiskey you like so much."

"You are forgiven for the dig at my cooking. I could use a drink."

"Your cooking is terrible, Rosie."

"Not forgiven enough for me to share my Chinese food."

"Oh, come on now, Rosie."

He followed her into her kitchen, the two of them bantering all the way, Al smiling. He'd hoped that Rosie would forgive him easily, but until now he had expected that he'd lose her as a friend.

It wouldn't have hurt, not for long, but that didn't stop him from being grateful that she was still willing to talk to him, to banter with him.

They kept the conversation light and cheerful over dinner, perched on tall chairs at the island in her kitchen, eating cheap Chinese food out of the cartons with forks. Al suspected it was helping them both unwind.

Afterwards, they settled on either end of her couch in the living room, her nursing a glass of cheap whiskey that made her wince every time she took a sip of it, him with a glass of water.

"So," she said.

"So," he responded.

"So your name is Albert Bennett," she said, to Al's surprise. He'd expected her to jump straight to the issue of the manila envelope, but it seemed like she had some other plan.

"Yes."

"You mind letting me know what other little lies you've been telling me over the past four months?"

Al laughed at that. "Just the last name, darlin'. I'm not very good at the lying part of subterfuge."

Rosemary raised a skeptical eyebrow at that. "Sure you're not."

Al shrugged and took a sip of his water before answering. "Half truths are easier to keep track of than outright lies. And stories... well, all stories have a grain of truth to them, don't they?"

"So you're really ex-military."

"That's right."

"Why Jackson?"

"It's my job. I'm sort of a jack of all trades over at Goddard."

Rosemary frowned, sipping her whiskey, just distracted enough by her own thoughts to not bother wincing at the taste of it. "Tell me about Goddard."

"What do you want to know?"

"How long have you been there for?"

"A couple of years. Got hired just a bit before Mr. Keller, in fact."

"Hm." Rosemary took another sip of her whiskey, staring down into it contemplatively. "And how long have you been with Mr. Keller?"

Al laughed again, startled. "Good Lord, Rosie, how your brain does make leaps of fancy."

Rosemary raised another skeptical eyebrow. "Am I wrong?"

"No."

"How long?"

"Longer than I've been with Goddard."

"That's not an answer, Al."

Al shrugged. "It's the only answer I have to give right now." He leaned across the couch towards her and raised his eyebrows. "Classified, and all that. Tell you and I'd have to kill you."

Rosemary eyed him, amused, and shook her head. "I really can't tell if you're joking or not."

Al went serious. "Not a joke."

Rosemary's amused expression disappeared too. "I see." She glanced over his shoulder at the side table behind him, where he'd set the manila envelope when they'd moved to the living room. "You planning to tell me about that, then?"

"You tell me something first, Rosie." At her nod, he continued. "You planning to take the offer Mr. Keller gave you?"

Rosemary made a face. "Oh, Al, I don't know." She sighed, studying her half-empty whiskey glass. "It's... it's asking a lot, even given the compensation package."

Al made a noncommittal noise.

"And, you know, I've got a whole six months of salary saved up. I can choose to be picky."

"Rosie, you know Goddard's the top of the top."

"And I have no assurances that they won't get tired of me being difficult after six months or a year and kick me to the curb," said Rosemary angrily, taking another sip of her whiskey. "After you've been kicked out by the top dog, your value depreciates quite drastically, Al. I'd rather work a string of jobs like the one I've had with Grayson than find it impossible to get another job in the field at all after being dumped by Goddard."

"I see." Al settled back on the couch, considering Rosemary. He'd expected any number of objections on her part to the job with Goddard, but this was one he hadn't quite foreseen. He took another sip of water to buy himself a little time to think. "What would it take for you to say yes?"

Rosemary was studying him as well, a little frown turning the corners of her mouth down. "I don't know, Al."

Al sighed, and picked up the envelope, waving it in Rosemary's line of sight, watching her eyes follow it. _Nothing ventured, nothing gained_ , he told himself. "How about Miranda Pryce?"

Rosemary's breath left her in a rush, and she stared at the envelope with wide eyes. " _Dr._ Miranda Pryce?"

Al raised an eyebrow. "So you've heard of her, then."

Rosemary let out a shaky laugh. "Of course I've heard of Miranda Pryce. The woman's a goddamn polymath, Al. Top of the field in every field she's interested in. Every major leap forward in computing, mechanics, bioengineering in the past twenty years can be laid at her feet." Rosemary sighed, and leaned back in her chair. "Yes, Al, I'd like to work with Miranda Pryce." She sighed again, looking off into the far corner of her living room ceiling. "I'd never be able to keep up with her, but I'd give any damn thing they wanted to take from me for the chance to work for Dr. Pryce."

"Well," said Al, using his free hand to pull a small, pocket recorder, one of Pryce's specials, out of his pocket. "I can get you that position. But in exchange, Mr. Keller wants everything, Rosie."

Rosemary stared at him, a little frown between her eyebrows. "What do you mean, everything?"

"We know a lot about you, Rosie."

"I noticed."

"But there are still gaps. And Mr. Keller... he wants to know it _all._ "

"I see." Rosemary stared at the manila envelope, rubbing her fingertips across her cheek, contemplative. "Well."

"Well."

"Tell me what you know and I'll try and fill in the gaps for you."

Al smiled. "All right. Mind if I record you?" He held up the small recording device, and Rosemary's eyes widened, noticing it for the first time.

"Well now, that is slick," she said, impressed. "Very well. But I get to take a look at that thing later."

Al laughed. "A pretty little toy, isn't it? One of Pryce's."

"Very pretty. Shall we get on with it, then?"

Al turned the recorder on and set it on the couch between them, then pulled out his notebook and a pen, scribbling a few names and dates. "Right. Here are the involved parties, near as I can figure. Your ex-husband, his lover, and, well, half the staff of the biology department from your college. And... your child."

He held the notebook out to Rosemary, and she scanned the list, then seemed to freeze in place for a moment. "Yes," she said after a moment. "I think you did get all the major players down. So tell me, what do you think happened?"

Al shrugged. "Near as I can tell? You got yourself knocked up, married the father, but someone in the department got jealous and put out a smear campaign on you. Then, you found out your husband had a male lover and broke it off with him on the grounds of infidelity, but he kept the kid and raised him with his lover."

Rosemary froze, then said cautiously, "That's... a little too close for comfort while not being at all right, I'm afraid."

Al frowned at Rosemary's caution. "Rosie, you don't have to do this. I can always go back to Keller and tell him you didn't bite."

Rosemary shook her head. "No, no, might as well make my mortification complete," she said, picking up the recording device. "My name is Rosemary Abigail Epps, and I give my consent for this audio recording." She frowned a little, staring down at the names that Al had written down. "I'm just not sure where to start." Rosemary stared at the names a little longer, then sighed. "Well. Might as well clear one thing up right away. Yes, I married Rick Herrera. Yes, I was pregnant when I did so. Yes, he and his partner raised that child." Rosemary sighed again. "But no, he wasn't the father."

"Who was?" asked Al, cautiously.

Rosemary tapped the name of her thesis advisor. "Him. Don't ask me to say his name out loud, I still can't bear to. You'll just have to fill in the blanks for your Mr. Keller." Rosemary's face had twisted a bit with a barely-hidden anguish as she'd pointed out the name of her child's father. And then, she continued.

"You know, I was eleven the first time a man old enough to be my father told me I had nice tits and tried to get me to touch his penis. He was a friend of my father's. And I got away from him and went to my parents and told them what had happened, and they didn't believe me."

"Well. That was just the first time something like that happened. It wasn't the last. But I was smart, and determined, and somehow despite all the men who just looked at me and saw a nice piece of ass, I made it through my teenaged years relatively unscathed."

"Take a girl like that, make her nineteen, twenty. Add in yet another man old enough to be her father, only this man, instead of telling her she has nice tits, he tells her she's smart. He tells her she's brilliant, the only woman brilliant enough to keep up with him, his true intellectual partner. He tells this girl that even though he's married, he really just stays with his wife because of the children, that there's no love there, that he'll divorce his wife and marry her, just give him time. And until then, why not give him everything else?"

As Rosemary kept talking, telling the story of a man who should have never been allowed near her, of parents who had abandoned her, of the gay couple who had rescued her in more ways than one, of the child she hadn't been able to bear to be a mother to, of the way she'd lost the self she'd once been... well. He'd never been the sort to think in terms of heartbreak, but all the same, his heart broke a bit for the girl Rosemary had once been.

"...and that's it, really. The whole sordid story. Is that enough for your Mr. Keller, do you think?"

Al flipped the recording device off and stared at Rosemary, his face pulling itself into a frown. Before this interview, he'd been sure what Rosemary was; someone else like him, someone who had lost their humanity a long time ago, someone who could commit to a cause with everything they had.

But now, he wasn't sure.

He didn't know what made him suddenly uncertain. He thought, though, that the way she'd said that the girl she'd once been was a stranger to her had something to do with it.

Because he'd seen that girl, peeking out from behind Rosemary's mask as she'd talked about what her thesis advisor had done to her. That girl was still waiting to grow up, to learn how to be human again.

And Al was pretty sure that if Rosemary went to Goddard, that girl would never get a chance to live in the real world again.

Al had been silent since Rosemary had finished speaking, and she gave him a questioning look. "Al? Will that do?"

Al cleared his throat. "Yes, I think so." He looked down at the recording device, wanting to crush it. "You know, Rosie, that this isn't the sort of job you leave by conventional means."

In his peripheral vision, he could see that Rosemary was looking steadily at him. "Yes, I know."

"I could get rid of this recording. Tell Mr. Keller you weren't interested."

"It would be a lie." Rosemary picked her glass up off the side table, and downed the rest of the cheap whiskey in it, wincing as it hit her throat. "Mr. Keller saying he has the best scientists in the world means nothing to me. So do other companies. But Dr. Pryce..." Rosemary's voice was full of longing. "She actually _is_ the best. And I have to know, Al. I have to know if I can keep up with the best. Because if I can, I become indispensable, don't I."

Al laughed a little at that. "It's true that Pryce tends to, ah, be rough on her lab managers. It would be a relief to not have to try and find someone new for her every three months."

"So I have to try." Rosemary gave him a pleading look. "Please, Al?"

Al sighed, and held the manila envelope out to Rosemary. "All right. Just... there's no going back, not once you've opened that. So be sure."

Rosemary took the envelope, her eyes glowing with excitement. "I'm sure."


	2. July 23rd, 1976: A Transcript

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A transcript of Rosemary's interview with Al.
> 
> Contains a mention of attempted suicide

**Bennett:**  [inaudible]

 **Epps:**  No, no, its fine. Might as well make my mortification complete. [voice becomes a bit clearer] My name is Rosemary Abigail Epps, and I give my consent for this audio recording.

I’m just not sure where to start.

[long silence, then a sigh]

Well. Might as well clear one thing up right away. Yes, I married Rick Herrera. Yes, I was pregnant when I did so. Yes, he and his partner raised that child. [a long pause] But no, neither of them were the father.

 **Bennett:**  [inaudible]

 **Epps:**  [the sound of tapping] Him. No, don’t make me say his name. I still can’t bear to. You’ll just have to fill in the blanks for Mr. Keller. 

[a long pause] 

You know, I was eleven the first time a man old enough to be my father told me I had nice tits and tried to get me to touch his penis. He was a friend of my father’s. And I got away from him and went to my parents and told them what had happened, and they didn’t believe me.

Well. That was just the first time something like that happened. It wasn’t the last. But I was smart, and determined, and somehow despite all the men who just looked at me and saw a nice piece of ass, I made it through my teenaged years relatively unscathed.

Take a girl like that, make her nineteen, twenty. Add in yet another man old enough to be her father, only this man, instead of telling her she has nice tits, he tells her she’s smart. He tells her she’s brilliant, the only woman brilliant enough to keep up with him, his true intellectual partner. He tells this girl that even though he’s married, he really just stays with his wife because of the children, that there’s no love there, that he’ll divorce his wife and marry her, just give him time. And until then, why not give him everything else?

I’d like to say I didn’t fall for it. But I was so hungry for what he had to offer. And he was my thesis advisor, so there were plenty of long, private meetings.

He didn’t like to use protection. And I was stupid enough to think that if the withdrawal method didn’t work, he’d do the right thing, divorce his wife right away, marry me and give our child a father. Looking back on it now… god, how naive. How did I even think that was going to work? But I thought it. And of course I got pregnant. And when I went to him… he told me he knew a doctor who could take care of it for me.

Of course I was devastated. I threatened to tell his wife about us, and he… god, it was almost overnight. He knew too many people, you see. All he had to do was call them up, say the right things, and suddenly everything I’d been so proud of was gone, wiped away in the face of being an uppity colored woman who was “difficult to work with.” Hell, most of the professors in the department got swept up in it too. Suddenly I went from being the department’s golden child to being a problem that needed to be swept under the rug, and I was so busy just trying to survive the day-to-day…

I was never going to get an abortion. It wasn’t very safe back in those days. Being illegal most places will do that to a medical procedure. I thought perhaps, if I went to my parents… they were so proud of me. Their bright, beautiful daughter, with her offers from graduate schools and a bright, beautiful future ahead of her. Surely they’d support me through anything.

Turns out that they didn’t care as much for a daughter who got herself knocked up by a married man.

College and room and board were all paid up through the end of the semester, so I just went back there. I didn’t know what else to do. But the whispers, the snubs, the fact that everything I’d worked for had disappeared overnight, just like that… And then I found myself on top of the science building. And I was so, so ready to make it all go away.

Rick found me there. Your file on me knows he was a lab instructor, right? I guess he’d been working late, cleaning things up and getting everything ready for the next day, and he saw me walking past. He told me later that he’d called out my name and I didn’t react at all, and I always had time to stop and say hello to him. So he followed me to the roof. Startled the hell out of me when he threw his arm across my shoulders, but it also startled me out of considering the best way to climb over the guard rail, so I forgave him eventually. And he just… he looked at me, and he said “Tell me your side, Rosemary.” So I did, and when I was done he handed me his handkerchief, and he said “I’ll marry you, Rosemary,” just like that.

I didn’t know what to think about it, not at first. But then he took me home, and he introduced me to Jamie. And poor Jamie… I’ve never met a man who wanted to be a father more, not to this day. But no agency was going to let a single man adopt a kid, not even a well-respected professor of philosophy. And a gay couple… well, even less of a chance.

No one would have believed me marrying Jamie out of the blue. But marrying Rick, well, that won me back just enough respectability to finish out the semester. I managed to graduate, just barely.

I’d been too busy to think about the… the reality of the baby before then. But now I was six months along, and the baby was getting more and more active every day, and all I could think was that I did not want this. The changes to my body revolted me, the feeling of it kicking inside me made me want to claw it out of my stomach. Rick and Jamie had their own routine, and without school to keep me busy I just… stopped. Over the next couple of months, I stopped leaving the house unless Jamie and Rick dragged me along, I barely managed to shower and dress each day. I wasn’t eating enough on my own, I couldn’t make myself… When I was about eight months along, I had a collapse, wound up in the hospital. My system was overtaxed.

I think the doctors thought I was faking it, at first. I was fat even back then, and, well, obviously a black woman could only be doing this for the drama of it. Thankfully, Jamie was the one who found me unconscious in the bathroom, and he tore them a new one. Funny how doctors will take a white man seriously when he gets going.

I don’t remember much of the next few weeks. Jamie said later that it was like I’d just lost the will to live.

They decided a c-section was the best chance of both me and the baby surviving. Rick okayed it, because I was in no place to give informed consent. And after…

I wasn’t comatose, not exactly. But even with the baby gone, everything was still so hard. Because despite it all, I still thought I loved him. If he’d shown up at the hospital, I would have gone with him in an instant, despite his abandonment, despite the shreds he’d ripped my reputation into. And without him… without his good opinion, without his presence in my life, it didn’t seem like my life was worth living any more.

Rick didn’t understand. He kept trying to bring the baby to me, kept acting like I’d snap out of it, become a mother if he could just get me to hold my son. But I couldn’t bear to be near the baby. I screamed, I cried, I wailed, I shoved away anyone who tried to bring the baby close to me.

But Jamie, dear, sweet Jamie, for all he wanted desperately to be a father… somehow he was the one who understood why I couldn’t bear to be a mother to the baby I’d given birth to. He came to me every day, just to sit and talk, whether I was capable of responding or not. Simple things, like how the weather was outside, or what he’d bought at the grocery store.

They’d moved me to a long-term care ward for the mentally ill at that point. Well. There was no way I could function on my own, and after the way I’d been reacting the past few weeks, there was no way anyone was letting me live in the same house as the baby. There was talk of sending me to an asylum, but Jamie kept fighting against it, kept saying that he could get through to me, if he just kept talking.

He was right. One day, he sat down with me, and he told me a story about a young man who, in his words, should have been old enough to know better. About a young man who fell desperately in love with an older man, a man who pushed his boundaries, who had sex with him without protection, sometimes without consent, and how that young man allowed it because he was so, so in love. About how that older man broke the young man’s heart, in the end.

And he said to me, he said “Rosie, you can let him take every other damn thing from you. You might even never be able to love someone ever again. Heaven knows I didn’t think I ever would, not until I met Rick. But if you do not get out there and live, he wins.”

Somehow that got through to me, when nothing else did.

It took another couple of months, months of talking with Jamie every day, months of slowly going out into the world again. I still refused to meet the baby, but I was… well, I was going to say I was me again, but the truth is I’d left behind the Rosemary I’d been before. I look back on her sometimes, that precious, precocious child, and sometimes I even miss being her, but I haven’t been her for a very long time. She’s a stranger to me.

But I was someone new, and this new me wasn’t going to give up anything she wasn’t willing to give up.

I gave up love. I gave up kissing, too, because every time I tried to kiss someone I just saw his face in front of mine, felt his lips… but I couldn’t quite bring myself to give up sex. I made sure I was never unprotected again, but I wasn’t going to give up something that felt so good.

And then… I moved on. Turned out that he hadn’t quite turned everyone in the department against me. One of the female lab instructors got in contact with me, introduced me to a friend she’d gone to school with who was running a corporate lab halfway across the country. I wound up there as a lab tech.

They tried to move me towards doing more research after a few months there, but I couldn’t… I’d lost my confidence. I could carry out other peoples instructions just fine, and I could put together proposals with the best of them, but when it came to executing them, I just didn’t have what it took any more. So instead, the lab manager took me on, started teaching me what he knew. And before I knew it, I was up for a lab manager position in a satellite lab.

It didn’t last long, of course; the satellite lab was only temporary, and when the job was done the company offered me the choice of going back to being a lab tech, with a significant pay cut, or being let go with a small amount of severance. I chose the severance and started over again at a new company.

After a couple of years, Rick got a divorce on the basis of abandonment, and all of my ties with him and the baby were officially severed, though Rick tries to send me pictures every once in a while. I mostly toss them in the trash. He looks more and more like his father with each passing year, and I can’t bear to look at him.

I’m sure you’ve seen my job history, so you know the rest. One job after another, references that were never anything less than spectacular, always from companies that could never quite bring themselves to prioritize me.

And that’s it, really. The whole sordid story.

Is that enough for your Mr. Keller, do you think?


	3. August 1st, 1977: Yearly Review

“One more thing, Rosemary.” Rosemary lowered herself back into her chair, watching as Mr. Keller dug in the drawer of his desk for something. “Now where is it…” He muttered. “Ah. Here we are.” He produced an envelope with a flourish, holding it out across the desk in Rosemary’s direction. She took it, raising a dubious eyebrow.

“And what is this, sir?”

Mr. Keller smiled. “Call it a… bonus. For a good first year on the job.”

Rosemary remained dubious. After her first year at Goddard, under Arthur Keller’s… unique style of management, she was fairly certain that any bonus would come with strings attached. And after the extremely critical—but fair, she reminded herself, she really did need to improve in all the ways he’d mentioned—end-of-year review he’d just put her through, she wasn’t sure she deserved a bonus of any kind anyway. “I don’t recall a bonus structure being part of my contract,” she said, laying the envelope back on the table. “So I’d rather not take this until I know what sort of strings are attached. What do you want from me? More weekend hours? I’m afraid I’ll have to negotiate Goddard paying for a laundry service, if that’s the case.”

Mr. Keller laughed at that. “No strings attached at all.” He remained cheerful and almost human, smiling across his desk at her. “You’re the first person who had managed to work as Pryce’s lab manager for more than a few weeks without quitting in a huff. And on top of that, you’ve managed to increase the efficiency of your team of scientists by a good 22%.”

Rosemary’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “So much?”

“Oh, yes.” Mr. Keller smiled and nudged the envelope back in her direction. “You’ve earned this.”

Rosemary picked the envelope up, eying it curiously now. “What kind of bonus is it? Stock options?”

“Why don’t you open it and see,” said Mr. Keller in a caressing tone.

Rosemary slit the envelope open with her finger and pulled out… were those newspaper clippings? She set the empty envelope on the desk and examined the first one.

‘Professor Emeritus Resigns in Disgrace’ was the title, and it was a clipping from the newspaper her alma mater ran, from May that year. She scanned the article, eyes wide, then set it aside and looked at the second clipping. An obituary, from just a few weeks ago. Very simple, just a few lines with name and surviving family.

Rosemary placed the obituary on top of the article with a shaking hand, and then folded her hands in her lap, staring across the desk at Mr. Keller with wide eyes. Suddenly she felt nineteen again, that impetuous, uncertain girl she’d been when her life had started to change for the worse, only she hadn’t known at the time where it would lead.

Mr. Keller smiled. “Goddard takes care of its own, Rosemary. I take care of my own.”

Rosemary nodded. “I understand, sir.” The bonus had come with strings attached… but these, she did not mind binding herself with. She took a deep breath, composing herself, and stood, tilting her head towards the newspaper clippings. “That can go in the the trash.”

Mr. Keller gave her a gleeful grin and swept the pieces of paper off his desk and into the trash can he kept under his desk. Rosemary smiled back and went to leave, but paused by the door to the office and turned back towards Mr. Keller, a small frown on her face.

“If you don’t mind me asking, sir… Do you know how he died?”

Mr. Keller’s smile was close-mouthed and thin-lipped, and his voice disapproving, and he looked down at the papers on his desk as he answered. “I believe he committed suicide. Shot himself in the head.” Mr. Keller looked back up at Rosemary, meeting her eye, his expression almost warm. “It turns out he could not weather the loss of his professional reputation nearly as well as you were able to, Rosemary.”

Rosemary gave Mr. Keller a real smile, not one of her manufactured, corporate masks, and he looked startled for a moment, then rueful. Rosemary wondered for a moment what would happen if she lingered. “Thank you, sir,” she said instead. “Time for me to get back to work.”

“You always do.”

* * *

 

“How did Rosemary like her bonus?” Miranda asked without preamble as she shut the door of Arthur’s office behind her.

“Oh, _excessively,”_ Arthur replied with a smile. “In fact, for a moment, I almost thought she was going to make a play for me.”

Miranda's eyebrows flew up her forehead in surprise. “Were you tempted?”

“Oh, you know I leave that sort of thing to you young people these days.”

Miranda scoffed. “I’m sure you do.”

“I will admit that the thought was briefly intriguing.” He cleared his throat and looked down at a file on his desk. “Al does seem to enjoy her… _attributes.”_ Miranda scoffed again, and Arthur continued, a little defensively. “I'm sure, given your predilections, that you've noticed her particular charms yourself, Miranda, so don't pretend you haven't.”

Miranda examined her nails in a bored manner for a moment, then sighed. “All right, Arthur, she does have very nice tits, I'll give you that. But really, Al would be so disappointed if she got a go at you first.”

Arthur laughed. “Well, there is that. But no. Nothing more than a moment of intrigue. And as I'm more than satisfied with your companionship, Miranda, I certainly didn't consider anything beyond that.”

Miranda smiled across the desk at Arthur, sharp and humorless. “Glad to hear it.”


End file.
